Google to Offer Ads Based on Interests — SAN FRANCISCO — Google will begin showing ads on Wednesday to people based on their previous online activities in a form of advertising known as behavioral targeting, which has been embraced by most of its competitors but has drawn criticism from privacy advocates and some members of Congress.

Making ads more interesting — At Google, we believe that ads are a valuable source of information — one that can connect people to the advertisers offering products, services and ideas that interest them. By making ads more relevant, and improving the connection between advertisers and our users …

Driving monetization with ads that reach the right audience — Advertisers spend more money on campaigns that reach the right audience; helping them do that should drive more revenue to your websites. This week we're announcing plans to provide interest-based advertising across AdSense publisher sites to help achieve that goal.

How Vista mistakes guided changes to Windows development — About a year ago on its Redmond, Washington, campus, a member of Microsoft's Windows Vista team met with a group of journalists to face some tough questions about the OS. — At the time, it was clear Vista was not going to be the …

Apple Store Down, 4GB iPod Shuffle in the Wings? — As many readers have noticed, Apple's online stores have gone down for updates. At this time of day, that typically means that Apple is adding new products to the store. — According to one source who previously relayed accurate information …

Visits to Gmail surpass YouTube — For the past two weeks, the market share of US Internet visits to Gmail has been higher than visits to YouTube. Previously, YouTube consistently ranked 10th among all websites by market share of visits until the week ending Jan. 10, 2009, where Gmail moved up one rank to reach #10.

Nokia latest releases set to hit the top of the charts — Espoo, Finland - Nokia today announced the arrival of new Nokia Music Stores, more Comes With Music launches and three new music devices. The Nokia 5730 XpressMusic, Nokia 5330 XpressMusic and Nokia 5030 bring people's music to life …

MeeHive wants to deliver smarter news aggregation — Kosmix, the company that automatically generates informational pages about any topic, is using its technology to improve the news-reading experience with a new product called MeeHive. — Okay, so I've probably got many of you rolling your eyes already.

Rumor: Samsung A877 to launch 3/29 for AT&T — This just in ... According to an anonymous source, it looks like Samsung A877 will be launching through AT&T on March 29. If you're in the market for a sweet messaging phone, this might be one worth waiting for. — 3.2" WQVGA AMOLED touchscreen

How Low Can PC Prices Go? — As consumers cut back and the popularity of low-cost netbooks grows, the computer industry could see a sharp drop in prices — When Jim Wahl bought his first computer back in 1995, it cost $2,500. In December, when the Dallas acquisitions manager bought a Hewlett-Packard …

Advertisers Get a Trove of Clues in Smartphones — The millions of people who use their cellphones daily to play games, download applications and browse the Web may not realize that they have an unseen companion: advertisers that can track their interests, their habits and even their location.

Is Crowdsourcing Evil? The Design Community Weighs In — Crowdsourcing, by its very name, encourages a comparison to outsourcing. But when Wired first published the article that entered the term into the popular lexicon, it was far from clear whether the phenomenon would realize its disruptive potential.

Gmail down; outage could last 36 hours for some — Google calls outage ‘minor’ — IDG News Service) Google Inc.'s Gmail e-mail service is down for an undetermined number of users, and while the outage has been partially fixed, some people could be locked out of their accounts for many more hours.

Folks, this is, in no way, open — Today the Guardian announced their “Open Platform,” much as the NY Times did a couple of weeks ago. It's even less open than the Times was. — If it were actually open they'd announce it to all developers at the same moment, so we could all try …

Lenovo retools business ThinkCentre desktops — Lenovo adds two entry-level ThinkCentre desktop PCs Lenovo on Tuesday announced that, in light of the recent economic downturn, it began offering two new, smaller, lower cost business PCs in its ThinkCentre line.

Another $10.5 million for Auditude's video ads — Auditude, a video advertising company best known for technology that can identify clients' video content and run ads against it, has raised a $10.5 million Series B funding round from Redpoint Ventures and existing investor Greylock Partners.

Is IE8 the end of the line for Internet Explorer? — Dropping IE in favor of a newer rendering engine may be not be as easy as it seems — IE8 is the last version of the Internet Explorer Web browser. At least, that's what I'm hearing through the grapevine.

Last.FM joins Google's rights row — Online music service Last.fm has waded into the row between YouTube and the Performing Right Society. — Founder Martin Stiksel said he hoped a resolution could be found to avoid illegal services from taking over. — He urged both parties to find a …